The corona pandemic has had Germany firmly under control for exactly a year when Thorsten Drechsler sat down last Sunday and wrote an open letter. The addressee: Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
It is not a fire letter, not an angry speech. Drechsler writes thoughtful sentences: “I would like to do my part again to live in a healthy society. But I can only do that if I can understand the ideas, the consequences, the visions with all their implications. At the moment, however, I feel rather chaos with those responsible in Berlin. “
The 55-year-old runs two shops in downtown Würzburg, the toy store “Die Murmel” and the gift shop “Eton Place”. He opened his first shop 30 years ago, and as a self-employed person he knows the unpredictability of business life.
He’s not a lament, even if it gets to his heart that he has barely been able to do his job for a year. He has always supported the corona measures. And yet at some point such a feeling spread, a discomfort. Drechsler speaks of a “creeping process”. And it’s not even about individual measures, it’s mainly about how. “I feel that some politicians treat me like a child, but no longer like a responsible citizen,” writes Drechsler to Steinmeier.
On the phone he says what’s on his mind. “You only get instructions, bans, regulations, appeals. You are not told where to go.” Politicians justify too little, and more and more decisions are no longer comprehensible.
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Majority of Germans are currently dissatisfied with Corona policy
Many people in the country are currently doing the same as wood turner. According to a representative survey commissioned by the German Press Agency (dpa), almost two thirds of Germans are dissatisfied with the government’s crisis management. Accordingly, 34 percent of the respondents are “very dissatisfied” and a further 31 percent are “somewhat dissatisfied”. In contrast, only four percent are “very satisfied” and 26 percent are “somewhat satisfied”.
In a comparable survey from April 2020, 67 percent were still more or very satisfied. At the beginning of the second wave in October it was 57 percent, at the beginning of February only 50 and at the end of February only 48 percent, according to the dpa.
A non-representative survey on the Main-Post website (as of Thursday noon) paints a similar picture: 50 percent consider the measures to be inadequate, 33 percent go too far. Only 17 percent are satisfied with the current course. The Easter resolutions of the Prime Minister’s Conference on Monday caused great resentment among readers of the Main-Post: “These measures are illogical and absolutely no longer comprehensible,” commented one user, for example.
Würzburg writer and mother: It is not seen what we are doing
“But what do we do when we run out of strength?” Eva-Maria Bast also gave free rein to her thoughts on Facebook, adding the emoji “desperate”. The 42-year-old, who lives in Überlingen and Würzburg, is an author and publisher (“Würzburg Secrets”) ?? and mother of five children, the youngest is one year old. After a year of Corona, she notices more and more that confidence is waning and instead an almost infinite exhaustion is spreading.
“We saw the need, we were willing to do our part to overcome the crisis. We looked after our children during the day, were educators, educators, primary school teachers, we constantly tried to be in a good mood, the children shouldn’t suffer. Our jobs did we at night, “she writes in her post and puts several hashtags under it. One is called #parental crisis. “I’ve always seen it as a task,” says Eva-Maria Bast on the phone, “but it just takes too long now. As a mother, I have the feeling that people don’t see what we’re doing.”
She, too, is increasingly lacking an understanding of the constant back and forth, the lack of logic in policy decisions. Yes, she’s angry too. For example, about the full planes to Mallorca and the empty hotels in Germany. And yes, she cried, she writes on Facebook, because her little son is not allowed to see his school friends because of a quarantine in his class.
It is the fourth time that she has to look after one of her children at home and throw all plans overboard. Once again you only have the night to work. “I consider myself extremely resilient, but now I’m at a point where I realize: I can no longer”, she says in an interview. “But what if we can no longer and still have to?”
Tax advisor: November aid destroyed trust
“You just don’t understand it anymore,” says Manuel Beck, tax advisor and father of three children from Estenfeld. For a long time, says Beck, he supported the corona measures. That changed with the lockdown light in November: “It was noticed that it was useless.”
That is exactly the problem for him: With useless measures, promises are made by politicians that in the end are not kept. The uncertainty would remain. He also made this experience when dealing with his customers: “People want to stick to the measures, but are afraid of the lack of economic prospects.” Much trust, according to Beck, was broken when the promised financial aid was not paid out in November or was only paid with immense delay.
Police warn, opposition calls for a clear change of strategy
The growing lack of understanding among people is also reflected in their behavior on the street: “In the course of the past two weeks, the Lower Franconian police had to cope with a large number of operations due to violations of the applicable contact restrictions. writes a spokesman for the police headquarters on request. However, because compliance with the Corona measures is “absolutely necessary” to contain the virus, the Presidium continues to hope that the population will understand and help.
Andrew Ullmann, Würzburg member of the FDP in the Bundestag, has been calling for a different strategy for months. In an interview with the editorial team, however, he emphasized another aspect: “The government keeps making promises that are not kept. This leads to disenchantment with politics, which worries me.” A first step out of the misery, according to Ullmann, is an admission by the government that things cannot go on as before.
In a next step, the parliaments would have to be more closely involved again: “New measures must be discussed in the parliaments before they are decided.” In addition, it must be prevented that people get infected in their private environment. “The lockdown leads to an increase in infections in the private sphere. That is why we do not need a radical lockdown, but smart and feasible measures that minimize the risk of infection transmission, especially in public.”
Barrientos: Poor people are neglected in measures
Simone Barrientos, left-wing MP from Ochsenfurt in the Bundestag, has also been criticizing the government’s corona policy for months? albeit with a completely different thrust than FDP man Ullmann. Barrientos was the first to sign the “Zero Covid” initiative, which calls for a Europe-wide “solidary shutdown”. She now tells the editors: “The current resolutions are incomprehensible and once again ignore the poor.” Another major problem in government policy is the constant lack of transparency.
“Despite the risk of infection, the government is no longer interested in inhumane working conditions in slaughterhouses, but you are not allowed to sit in the theater at a distance,” said Barrientos. At the same time, vacationers are likely to fly to Mallorca, but relaxation in their own region is not possible.
However, relaxation is the wrong way to go: “We immediately need better basic security, fictitious employer wages and relief measures for everyone who falls by the wayside.” Only in this way did people feel taken with the necessary restrictions.
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